


A Million Miles Away

by Jael



Series: Rebuilding Bridges [1]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Leonard Snart Lives, Prequel, Time Jump, emotional whiplash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-05 15:27:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16370222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jael/pseuds/Jael
Summary: One moment Leonard Snart has accepted death at the Oculus...and the next, he's back on the Waverider, disoriented and alive after all. But a lot of time has passed for everyone but him, and a lot of things have changed. Prequel to "Me vs. You."





	A Million Miles Away

**Author's Note:**

> After I wrote "Me vs. You," I couldn't get that version of the characters out of my head. So I wrote a prequel. (OK, two prequels. I'll post the other one in a few days.) Thanks to LarielRomeniel for the beta!

Sara had been right.

It _is_ lonely.

Oh, maybe he’s not dead yet, but his hands are numb and the rest of him is starting to follow. Leonard stares into the surging blue energy of the Oculus Wellspring, trying to keep his mind empty of anything that might make him regret this decision more than he already is. If those energy waves are hazardous—and knowing the Time Bastards, they probably are—he’s already gotten a good dose of them, and it’d probably be too late even if he wasn’t determined to stay here and blow this damned thing up.

He can still feel Sara’s kiss on his lips, though. It’s stupid and sentimental, but he hopes the explosion happens quickly enough that he can still feel it when he...

There’s a noise in the echoing wellspring chamber, and he jerks his head around, relieved when it’s just a new batch of the Time Bastards’ soldiers and one, he thinks, of the No. 1 Time Bastards themselves. Not Mick, not Sara, not anyone he cares about keeping from this train wreck he’s dedicated himself to causing.

Train wreck. _Lisa, I’m sorry._

“Shut it down!” the No. 1 Time Bastard yells. All the soldiers have their weapons trained on Leonard, but no one’s shooting. Maybe a shot would set things off? He tries to make his hand grip the failsafe a little tighter, just in case. The energy is surging, blue waves clouding his vision.

It is, he thinks, nearly time.

_What’s it like? Dying?_

_What’d you feel?_

Leonard turns his head, grimacing, toward the Time Bastard. And for some reason, the only right last words he can think of, the only thing that pops into his head, is from that movie Lisa liked so much when she was little, when she still hoped a Blue Fairy might come into their lives and save them.

Leonard Snart smiles grimly. He grips the failsafe a little harder. And he stares right at the No. 1 Time Bastard.

_I guess lonely._

“There are,” he tells Druce, “no strings on me.”

And Leonard gets his wish. He can still feel Sara’s kiss on his lips when the Oculus wellspring explodes, blue light surging around him, energy buffeting him and ripping him away.

_Like everybody I loved..._

He falls into the wellspring, barely conscious, or is he conscious at all? Because the blue light is all he can see. He can’t feel anything. Not pain nor fear, not anger nor regret.

_...was a million miles..._

Well, maybe regret.

_Away._

* * *

Something tugs on his arm.

Leonard frowns, turning his head. Blue light flickers through his eyelids, and he squints against it. What...

Tug. Tug.

His hands are still numb, but he tries to jerk his arm away, disoriented and a little annoyed. He’d been falling, he thinks, but he’s not now, and...

 _Thud_!

He lands on something hard and cold, his shoulder smarting from the impact, his cheekbone glancing painfully off something metal. He growls in irritation, ripping his arm away from whoever’s yanked on it, struggling to sit up and get his bearings as the glare of blue light fades slowly from his vision and he becomes aware of a buzz of voices.

Panic surges, and he lurches away. Have the Time Bastards found a way to rip him away before the explosion after all? He thought the explosion had already happened...but then he’d be dead, dying alone, not whole and relatively unhurt, blinking up at a group of people he doesn’t recognize as his vision returns.

They don’t look like Time Bastards.

“Here, mate.” The blond in the trench coat and red tie offers him a hand. “You’ve been through it, haven’t you?”

“Careful!” the man next to him cautions, a worried look on his face. “I told you what he did to Amaya...” The woman next to him throws him a doubtful glance, while the other woman frowns.

“Who the hell’s Amaya?” Leonard snarls at him, but then his attention’s caught by motion to his other side, and he recoils a little at the sight of two figures, one in what almost seems to be a spacesuit.

The other is…in the ATOM suit?

The one on the left gets its helmet off first, and Leonard feels the bottom dropping out of his stomach as he freezes, staring.

Mick Rory gapes back at him for a moment before barking. “Gideon? Is this real Snart?”

Leonard barely hears him, or the response. He’s on the ship. And Mick’s here, Mick’s alive, thank god, so he’d made it out of the explosion zone, but there was one more person there when Leonard took the Oculus and...

“Where’s Sara?” he says, surging to his feet and stumbling. His feet and legs are numb.

“On the bridge.” Another familiar voice. The second suited igure is holding its helmet now--and it’s Raymond, of course. But who the hell who are the rest of these people? Leonard gives them a wary look, abruptly cognizant that he’s on the floor just inside the Waverider’s main hatch.

Which means the bridge is...

Stumbling again, he turns and heads down the corridor, heading for the bridge. He thinks.

“Mr. Snart!” Gideon’s voice rises over the chorus of other voices that seem to be telling him to stop. “You should get to medbay. I’m not certain what the effects of long-term exposure to the timestream...”

He ignores her, grimly, barely hearing the words, or at least not fully registering them. “Gideon? Am I going in the right direction?”

“Yes, but...”

Then someone’s in front of him, and Leonard blinks up at Mick, who’s still wearing part of his spacesuit and staring at his partner. The look on Mick’s face is...

And as weird and disorienting as this whole thing has been, that’s Leonard’s first clear sign that it’s even odder than he thinks.

“It’s really you.” Mick stares, then shakes his head. “It’s you. Not a...a hallucination. Not old you. Not Leo. _You_.”

Leonard frowns at him. “Leo? What...”

But Mick’s done something really weird now. He’s stepped forward and enveloped his oldest friend in a bear hug, squeezing enough that Leonard feels his breath wheezing out of his lungs. Mick smells like smoke and sweat and beer, just like normal, but his action is so unexpected and out of character that Leonard just stands there in stunned silence until his friend releases him and takes a step back, a thoroughly un-Mick-like smile on his face.

“What the hell?” he asks, conversationally, turning his head as the Boy Scout runs up beside them. Raymond looks like he wants a hug too, but Leonard holds up a hand, and he stops.

The other two men exchange a glance.

“Snart,” Raymond says quietly. “How long did you think it was? That you were gone?”

The words don’t make sense. Leonard frowns at him, then at Mick, whose smile is laced with (also un-Mick-like) consideration now.

“The goddamned Oculus just exploded,” he says, waving a hand back toward the hatch. “How did you get me out of there? Is S...is everyone else all right?”

He takes a step toward the bridge again. Raymond steps in front of him and reaches out to rest his hands on Leonard’s shoulders. But before Leonard can slug him and remove the offending appendages from his person, he speaks again.

“Snart,” he says gently. “It’s been three years since the Oculus exploded.”

Leonard stares at him. “What?”

“He’s right,” Mick says in a low voice, looking down. There’s pain in his voice, and now Leonard hears it. “Been a long time, Snart.”

The idea doesn’t compute. “Three years.”

“Yeah.” Raymond gives him a rueful little smile. “We all thought you were dead.” He glances at Mick. “Until the Time Bureau got a reading showing very dramatic temporal fluctuations in this region and asked us to check it out. And we found you just...floating...there. Mick and I went out to pull you onboard.”

“That’s not possible.”

“It is.” Raymond looks sympathetic, but stubborn. “But if you won’t listen to us...” He raises his voice. “Gideon?”

“Mr. Snart, they are correct.” If Leonard didn’t know better, he’d think the AI’s voice had its own share of pain layered underneath the computerized tones. “You were presumed dead in the Oculus explosion. Which was very nearly three years ago as of today.”

Three years.

It’s too much to process. Leonard holds very still, staring down the hallway toward the bridge.

“Savage?” he asks after a moment.

Mick makes a noise of satisfaction. “Dead,” he says. “Real dead.” He frowns at Leonard glances at him. “Didn’t save Hunter’s family, though. And he’s dead too.”

“Sara’s the captain now,” Raymond cuts in as Leonard digests the blunt words. “She’s a good one.”

“Of course she is,” Leonard murmurs. Three years. And he’d never stolen a kiss. He doesn’t want to think about that—but there are some familiar faces he’s neither seen nor heard mentioned. “The professor? The kid? Kendra?”

Raymond and Mick exchange glances. “Stein died,” Raymond says quietly. “In...well. We’ve got a lot to tell you. Jax is OK. He went back to Central City. And Kendra left with Carter. He, uh, got his memory back.”

“Sorry to hear that. About the professor.” And he is. He takes another step, still heading for the bridge, Mick and Raymond falling in on either side of him. “Anything else I should know about?”

They exchange another glance over his head. Leonard’s not sure how he feels about that. “Well, you blew up the Time Bastards,” Mick rumbles. “But now there’s the Time Bureau. They’re the good guys. That’s what they tell us, anyway.”

“Bureau. Sounds…annoying.”

“You have no idea,” Raymond tells him fervently. “But we’ve got a sort of…détente. We work together. And…ah…”

“Blondie was playin’ house with their director.” Mick’s words are harsh, blunt, with the air of ripping off a bandage. Leonard stops in his tracks, looking at his friend, who regards him steadily. “Real serious, like.”

He hadn’t thought Mick knew about his…his feelings for Sara. He’s not even sure what sort of name to put to them, really. But he does know, as he stares at Mick, that there’s a pit of sorts somewhere in the vicinity of his stomach, and a hope he hadn’t even know was stirring again is starting to fold up and die.

“Don’t know what happened there. They ain’t living together anymore, but I don’t know that they’re done, either.” Mick pauses. “Uh. Don’t know that you and her…the director lady…”

“Ava Sharpe,” Raymond interjects helpfully. “Yeah, Snart, I don’t think you’ll be a fan.” He continues obliviously. “She wasn’t a big fan of the Legends until she hooked up with Sara. Don’t really know if she really is now. She’s really big on rules.”

Leonard gives Mick a look he’s pretty sure is equal parts aghast and disbelieving. Maybe with a slight side order of…

Hurt? Heartbreak? He shies away from those terms, already packing the old ice in around his heart. If he even wants to admit he has one….

And then that ice shatters.

“Leonard?”

It’s like some stupid movie cliché, like one of those ridiculous rom-coms Lisa likes. He looks up and there’s Sara, at the end of the hall, staring back at him like she can’t believe her eyes.

She looks amazing. Not so different, really…maybe there’s something different with her hair, maybe there’s now a line or two around her eyes. But there’s something indefinable there, too, like she’s easier in her skin, like she’s made her peace with her past, and it’s just a part of her now.

The lost assassin is found. Or it’s just that she’s found her place, there in the captain’s chair of the Waverider.

Leonard takes a step toward her; he can’t help it. Then another. And…

“Sara!”

There’s another blond woman in the hallway suddenly, appearing behind Sara but moving to her side, giving her an odd glance before looking toward Leonard, Mick and Raymond. She’s wearing a blue suit, and her hair is pulled back, and every instinct Leonard has tells him this is not someone to cross. The air of competence and badassery is really rather like Sara’s—but something else about her (a certain sense of rigidity, of official authority) is rather definitely not.

Sara blinks, looking at the other woman…who’s set a hand on her arm. A rather proprietary hand, if Leonard’s any judge. He starts to bristle, stuffs it down. He has no right. He never did.

Sara seems to sense Leonard’s abortive movement, looking back at him.

“Ava,” she says, looking a little sheepish. “We found the cause of your temporal fluctuations.” She nods toward Leonard, who thinks he’s feeling even more disoriented now than he felt before.  “This is Leonard…”

“…Snart.” The other woman—Ava—finishes, staring. The disbelief on her face has started to morph into something else, and Leonard has started to feel like maybe he should get out of here. “The thief. The villain. The man who murdered the Time Masters.”

Sara whirls. “What? No…”

But Ava is advancing toward him. “Leonard Snart,” she says grimly, “I’m taking you into custody. For questioning about the destruction of the Vanishing Point.”

Leonard stares at her. “Ex- _cuse_ me?” he manages.

Raymond and Mick both start talking at once, and Sara, shaking her head in disbelief, moves in front of the other woman, holding out her hands.

“Leonard is a _hero_ ,” she says firmly, and Leonard both winces at the word and feels gratified at the support. “He freed time. Didn’t Rip tell you what the Time Masters did? We had to undo their crap to defeat Savage, for free will.”

Ava stops, looking at Sara, and Leonard supposes he should be grateful that there’s enough trust there, at least, that she listens. She glances back at Leonard, and he can see the conflict in her eyes.

“Director Hunter just told us to keep an eye open for him, about what he did,” she tells Sara. “He told us the Vanishing Point exploded, because of _him_ ,” she jerks her head at Leonard, “and we were the heirs to the Time Masters, because someone had to protect time.”

Mick snorts. “Good ol’ Rip,” he says, “always leavin’ shit out.”

Ava bristles at him, but Raymond steps forward, between her and Leonard, and damn it, he’s grateful for the Boy Scout now, because Raymond’s posture is both determined and protective.

“We were all part of that too,” he tells the Time Bureau director staunchly. “Mick, me, Sara.” He points at Leonard. “He’s just the one who held down the failsafe and, we thought, lost his life because of it.” He looked thoughtful. “I mean, hell, I was holding it first. Then Mick knocked me out. Then Leonard knocked _him_ out. Sara didn’t knock anyone out. This time.”

Ava Sharpe looks like Raymond’s giving her a headache. Leonard feels some satisfaction—along with an unwilling rush of sympathy. But Raymond’s continuing, glancing at Mick, who’s nodding in agreement.

“Anyway, if you’re going to blame someone, going to arrest someone, you’ll have to arrest us all,” he says. “We were all part of it.”

“He’s right,” Sara jumps in quietly. “And Rip apparently didn’t tell you that it was _his_ plan. To blow up the Oculus.” She nods as the other woman looks at her. “The Time Masters were as corrupt as hell. It had to be done. Or Vandal Savage would still be on course to take over the world and we’d all be dead.”

“Or worse,” mutters Mick, but only Leonard and Raymond hear him.

“Rip probably wanted you to keep your eyes out for him for another reason,” Sara continues, looking at Leonard, then away. “Probably…he suspected Leonard wasn’t…dead.”

“If he did, can we bring ‘im back and kill ‘im again?” Mick asks, but Raymond hushes him.

Whatever there is between them, this Ava trusts Sara enough that she believes her. Leonard can almost see the instant her ire turns from Leonard himself to the absent and presumed deceased Rip.

“Damn it,” she says under her breath, then turns her gaze back on Leonard. He never learns what she would have said, though, because at that point, Sara reaches out and touches her elbow, and her attention wavers back to the captain.

“Come on,” Sara says, her own attention now thoroughly off Leonard. “I’ll tell you the whole…” The pause is so tiny that Leonard thinks that only he hears it, or maybe it’s just his imagination.  “… the story.” She glances back at them. “Listen to Gideon,” she says quietly. “Medbay’s probably a good idea.”

And then she’s gone, heading back to the bridge side by side with Ava, and Leonard can’t help feeling like she’s walking right back out of his life again, any furtive chance he had gone before it could be realized, or maybe it never existed at all. And he’s not the sort to hold that against someone, he really isn’t, but he…he has whiplash.

It was only an hour or so ago she’d challenged him to steal a kiss.

And only minutes ago that she’d kissed _him_.

He can’t feel that kiss anymore.

“You OK, boss?” Mick asks quietly, and even Raymond’s just watching quietly, seeming to understand that there are more things going on here than he realizes.

Leonard Snart drags in a breath.  He lets it out slowly. He’s alive. Ten minutes ago, he’d known he was going to die. He has a second chance at life.

Three years.

And he has no idea what to do with it.

“Peachy.”

 


End file.
